Facebook reveals some details on government data requests

After chats with Uncle Sam, Facebook got the green light to release some details of U.S. national security-related data requests, the company said Friday.

Although…not a lot of details.

Facebook was one of the nine companies caught up in the NSA Prism fiasco, in which tech companies were accused of sharing user data with the government for security investigations. This week the company publicly appealed to the government for permission to reveal just how often it handles these kinds of requests.

Turns out, not that often. Since Dec. 31, 2012, Facebook received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from local, state and federal entities. Those ranged from federal marshals tracking fugitives to local police departments looking into an assault.

Some 18,000 to 19,000 accounts were impacted.

Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, noted in a company blog that the total number of requests was a small fraction of Facebook’s more than 1.1 billion active users.

“We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive,” he wrote.

Facebook wasn’t the only company to approach the federal government with a transparency request. Google and Microsoft also sent letters to the FBI and Attorney General with a similar request, so I would expect to see some of their numbers show up over the next few days.